Re: (TV) Even fewer words from Verlaine

[eRacerX <eracerx@verizon.net>]

WFMU - cool!


 
"After silence, that which comes nearest to expr
essing the inexpressible is music. Music is what feelings sound like."


~ Aldous Huxley ~

On Thursday, May 8, 2014 3:03 PM, Bob Beatty <bob
jb2002@yahoo.ca> wrote:
 


That aux.tv one was a questionnaire, no
t an interview. A barrage of 

optional-to-answer questions. No wonder 
it failed as an "interview," 

& Tom chose to not respond to most of it
. Aside from the fact it had some q
uestions bound to leave Tom uninteres
ted in answering (e.g.  lots of ones
about the past), the format seems 
wrong. There's no back & 
forth conver
sation to provoke answers, & I i
magine it would be hard 
to open up via a
questionnaire, (or even back 
& forth texting) to a 
journalist one had n
ever even spoken to before.
..Especially when he asks such an awful lead-off
question: QUOTE: "You've
 cited French 
impressionism as influences for y
our lyrics and guitar 
playing. Why do 
you find that movement inspiring?"
  -Tom responds s
aying "sorry, mr. 
greg i am not sure of these claims 
of mr. tom being
 'cited'..." !


Has Tom ever cited impressionism as 
an influence 
on his lyrics & guitar playing? Not that I recall hearing of, 
impression
ism being a painters' 
movement: Monet, etc. I wonder if the jo
urnalis
t intended to say "French Symbolist" (literature) movement instead? 
But 
I think that would have 
been wrong too (if too often repeated as a "
f
act"  by journalists). Paul Verlaine was a symbolist movement poet, but 

Tom's said he doesn't even 
like Verlaine's poetry that  much, but t
ook
the name just 'cause he 
liked the sound of it. And I think Patti S
mith,
not Tom, was the huge 
Rimbaud fan. The only French poet I recall
 Tom so
unding excited about in an interview was Nerval, a romantic poet 
not associ
ated with the 
symbolists, who was obsessed with some woman,
 & ended up c
ommitting suicide in the street in Paris. 

I don't k
now if the other
recent bad interview, the LiveinLimbo one may have 
be
en a phone intervi
ew (or texting?), as there was back & forth 
convers
ation, which didn't g
o well. On a positive note, at least the terrible a
ux.tv 
interview elici
ted several useful bits of info from Tom: a new 
album 
could be out by Xm
as, WFMU's his fave radio station, & his comm
ents 
on Toronto (my old hom
e town) audiences. Well, that awful interv
iew 
could have been worse!
-
Bob



On Thursday, May 8, 2014
 9:22:49 AM, Joe Hartley <jh@brainia
c.com> wrote:

On Thu, 8 May 201
4 11:54:27 -0400
Emilie <emilie.t.hs
u@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's fu
nny, these emails remind of this article 
in the new New York Review
> 
of Books about how writers hate the question
s that readers ask them call
ed
> "Stupid Questions":
> 
> http://www.
nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog
/2014/may/01/stupid-questions/?insrcwbll

That
was brilliant.  This
 sums it up perfectly:
"The public are firing shot
s in the dark; they 
are groping for some kind 
of connection between the 
figure on the sta
ge and the particular atmosphere 
of the novels they hav
e read."


It's one thing for the public to grasp at these straws, but o
ne hopes fo
r
better from someone conducting an interview.  Sadly, for e
very Ty 
Burr
there are a thousand hacks who are no better than the genera
l pub
lic and
who do not seem to grasp the concept of researching the subj
ec
t beforehand.

Being a fan and having listened to MM a thousand times

does not qualify you
to interview Tom for publication.  Doing some r
es
earch and reading past
interviews gets you a lot closer.  I think 
my fa
vorite Tom interview is the
one from the New York Times from 2006
 where T
om and the reviewer went to
the Metropolitan Museum of Art bef
ore they sa
t down(*).  Talking about the 
art provided a great sprin
gboard for the
rest of the conversation and 
clearly got Tom to talk ab
out things that 
he usually brushes off.

With this latest batch of "
interviews" I can u
nderstand why Tom is so
reluctant to do many of the
m.

(*) http://www
.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/arts/music/18verl.html?_r 
- UNIX/network Consultant - jh@brainiac.com
Without deviation from the n

orm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa

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